Niçoise salad (salade Niçoise in French, pronounced sah-LAHD Nee-SWAZ, and say it like you mean it) is a perfect heat-wave dinner. It comes from the French Riviera city of Nice and is very Mediterranean. It’s also pescatarian, as befits a former small seaport turned large city and jumping-off point for global jet-setters. This recipe contains everything I’ve ever put into a sah-LAHD Nee-SWAZ, but you wouldn’t do all of it at one go.
Cousin Matthew’s Niçoise Salad:
Serves two gluttonous middle-aged men and some tuna for the dog; YMMV. You will not be wolfing this down, but rather eat enough to make a meal, leave it out on the platter, and pick at it over the course of two or three hours, leaving you enough time to Discuss the Topics of the Day
1 terrace on the French Riviera overlooking the Mediterranean (optional)
4 eggs
1 bowl of icy water
3/4 or 1 lb small red potatoes, skin on
1/2 lb haricots verts. These are skinny green beans. Use regular green beans if you want. Or, use 1/2—3/4 lbs artichokes. I use more because we like artichokes better than green beans.
1 head of lettuce’s worth of leaves, dry. Boston or Bibb lettuce is good for this because the leaves are sturdy, but you can really use any. Actually, not kale or anything that is bitter and flowers like it.
2 cans of tuna packed in oil, not albacore packed in water. If you have access to tuna from a Mediterranean country use that. Tuna cans have shrunk in size lately so get about 12 oz. total. A little more if you have a pet who likes tuna. Believe me, they all do.
Dressing (I’ll get to that)
3–6 cherry tomatoes per person
3—4 small radishes, halved or sliced, per person (optional)
3—4 anchovies from a tin, drained, per person (optional)
Olives, black and green. Did you know that black olives are just ripened green olives? People have preferences though. (optional)
Good French bread, a baguette, warmed/toasted, and sliced (optional) to accompany
Olive oil-based dipping for the bread, if using. See below, at the very end.
Several bottles of a good rosé (optional) to accompany
Hard boil the eggs, this takes about 6—8 minutes. Don’t salt the water. Remove with a spoon, dunk them in the ice water and let them cool. When you can handle them, peel and let them sit in a different bowl, not the ice water.
While the eggs are boiling, slice your small red potatoes into cubes and simmer them. You might get away with doing this in the same pot you boiled the eggs in, if your timing is right and you clean it out to remove any leaking from your eggs. You don’t want to get the potatoes too mushy. You should be able to poke a fork through the skin and not hit bedrock. Put aside, but not in the bowl with the eggs.
Using the same pot, boil the haricots verts for a few minutes, no more than 5. Throw them in the ice water bowl. Take them out and dry them.
Now you’re done with the cooking part. Take your lettuce leaves and make a base on a serving platter. You’ve made a lot of food so this needs a large, preferably Mediterranean-themed piece. We got ours as a housewarming gift from a native of Naples. Long story. Don’t serve this on something even vaguely metallic.
Open your cans of tuna, drain, and try to keep it as flaky as possible. Here’s what I do. Make a mound of that in the middle. Quarter or halve your hard-boiled eggs and put them in a circle around but not touching the tuna. Arrange the haricots verts at will. Same with the potatoes.
If you’re using the option items you might be inspired to distribute them, like I do. Put the olives around each side, green on one. Black on the other. Arrange the radishes like numbers on a clock. I keep the anchovies whole so I make plus signs out of them and they go on top. You can dice them and sprinkle them like bread crumbs but not everyone likes anchovies. In fact a lot of people will not like some of these ingredients so when you serve this on your Mediterranean-themed platter on your terrace on the French Riviera overlooking the Med you might want to separate all the components on your lettuce-lined platter.
The dressing:
Despite my best efforts my salade Niçoise always comes out a little watery. I have been known to forgo a dressing but when I make one I whisk some tangy mustard, like a spicy Dijon, maybe about 1/2 cup, with a little dry white wine. Whisk it in the measuring cup with your mini-whisk. Doesn’t everyone have one? This is key: Don’t use red wine and don’t use sweet whites like a Riesling or a Gewürtztraminer. I may be the only non-German on the planet who can pronounce Gewürtztraminer.
The dipping sauce for the bread:
In a small bowl, pour about 1 cup olive oil, a little lemon juice (preferably squeezed from 1 large lemon or 2 smaller ones) and a tablespoon of minced garlic. I hope you like garlic. Whisk this around. You can also add a little pepper. I think that’s too much but that’s what my dining companion likes. If you want, make a lot more of this and keep the leftovers. If you add honey later on it makes a good coating, not a marinade, for chicken and pork.
Thank you Cousin Matthew! What an excellent and entertaining recipe. really appreciate your cook’s tips.
I will make this as one of the first meals in the finally renovated kitchen (in 3 weeks or so, once I have running water on the first floor, sigh.)
Thank you for allowing me the privilege to share this!
Since I’m in a sharing mood:
Our anniversary is around now. I decided we would celebrate it last night. I get to choose because I make dinner, and I was going to make this. I chose last night because I insist we abstain from eating meat on Fridays. Not from any pre-Vatican II Catholic proscription, I just needed to pick a day. Neither of us is Catholic but I grew up in an overwhelmingly Catholic town where it was like Vatican II never happened. In our publicly-funded, non-sectarian public school, we ate like seminarians in the 1950s when Fridays rolled around. So many lunchtime fish sticks.
But I digress. This recipe is infinitely adaptable but if you stray much from the script you can’t really call it Niçoise. Lump crab meat happened to be on sale so I used that instead. It’s tomato season here so I went heavy on the tomatoes. Olives, for some reason, have shot up in price, so I used a few of them sparingly. I decided to make the asparagus (which itself is borderline salade Niçoise) and diced them and mixed them in with the crab. I can’t even remember what else I did because in my household the rosé is sacrosanct, and it was our anniversary.
Happy anniversary!
…and thank you for sharing this great post. Now please direct me to where the olives are because that is where I intend to stay until I eat every one of them before the other olive-obsessed people show up.
Thus the only good martini is a very dirty martini. You come sit by me, we will hoard all the olives.
No, thank you! I don’t know where all the olives went. A very strange Whole Foods-like supermarket opened up near us. I love it so much I’ve actually applied to work there more than once over the years. No dice. I’m over 23 and I actually graduated from high school.
When they opened they had this olive bar. I think they got the idea from Whole Foods. It was very strange. My neighborhood is–not Mediterranean let’s say. Aside from that the pricing was all over the place, as was the sourcing. They’d just make up names. “These heirloom My Big Fat Greek Wedding olives–” It wasn’t that bad but it came close. And then suppose there was a made up a name, and there was a green/unripe variety, and a black/ripe variety. Every week one would cost twice than the other, and it would switch. They took it out at some point.
That’s not where the bizarreness ended but this is plausibly responsive to your comment. Still, like I said, I loved the place. The inventory was ever-changing and it was like the pricing was done by a drunken 7-year-old.
I used to haunt the cheese counter. “Excuse me, is this a real Stilton from Britain? And you’re selling it for $1.99/lb.?” They’d bring over the department manager, who was over 23. “Yes, it is. I don’t make up these prices. Can I interest you in this? It’s essentially Kraft American cheese product. $23.99/lb. And people buy it. The customers have no idea what they’re doing.”
“Do you have any more of this Stilton in the back?”
“No, because a half a dozen people, like you, know what they’re doing. This probably fell off a truck, wink wink, on the way in from Kennedy. We won’t see it again but check back next week. There’ll be something, I guarantee it.”
…congrats & such on the anniversary, there
Happy Anniversary !🎉🎉🎉
Happy Anniversary Cousin Matthew and Husband! How many years?
Since we got together so young and it’s been so long I’ll express this in Roman numerals:
XXXIV
I’ve got a feeling you two crazy kid are gonna make it!
Out of sheer inertia if nothing else.
…at least it’s a comfortable, well-fed inertia?
Arrrrgh, I lost my post (still too many tabs open on m’phone!), but I found this on the olives:
The tarrifs have also hit Olive OIL out of the EU–and particularly Spain really hard. If you Google it, you’ll see alllllll sorts of stories.
I also know that over here in MN, Bill’s Imported Foods has been running into issues getting their goods into the US/out of Europe.
I stopped by this week, and got to chatting with the owner, about a couple items they didn’t have, and he told me that between Covid (and it’s effects on the workforce both at the importer/exporter level, but ALSO with Port workers going down!), and the tarrifs, he’s not sure *when* his next container is arriving AND he has absolutely zero idea which of the things he ordered *actually made it into his shipping container*🙃
He said his order usually arrives *this month,* but that he has noooooo idea if it’ll get here soon, or months from now!😳😬🥴
To give a bit of perspective, Bill’s is basically *an institution* in MSP, when it comes to Greek Foods. If you want really good quality stuff, that you simply WON’T find elsewhere, You go to Bill’s.
They’re the one place in town where you can ALWAYS count on a solid selection of olives, and… i dunno… a *minimum* of 6-8 different types of Feta, from ALL over Europe & the Mediterranean?
He told me that for the FIRST time in the 15 years he’s been running the store (he took over for his mom), THEY HAVE NO GREEK FETA in stock!😳😳🤯
He sold out a little while ago, and he STILL doesn’t have an ETA on that container he’s waiting on🙃
Bill’s is literally AN INSTITUTION here, for Greek foods. The fact that THEY are out of their STAPLE Greek Feta (AND that they currently have NO Niçoise Olives!🤯), was astounding… like, THIS DOES NOT COMPUTE–levels of woooooowwwww!
I know that the fancy grocery store in our region has also been cutting back on the offerings in their olive bar, too, soooo my guess is the cost thing is most likely Tarrifs/import-related😕
I love Nicoise Salad, but I can’t seem to get decent canned or pouch tuna. It’s always full of nasty black bits. I’m very picky but the last one I bought was really gross. My dog doesn’t seem to mind though.
My sister gave me a mini whisk years ago and I laughed. But I find me using it all the time.
The black bits are usually fine, they’re part of the guts of the tuna, so you’re getting not only the meat but a little extra organ parts thrown in. I’m not surprised that your dog goes crazy over this. If you’ve ever eaten even a tiny bit, whether by mistake or design, you know that it’s incredibly…something. I don’t actually mind it but the tuna then has to be rendered into something like a tonatto sauce. Or at the very least a tuna salad heavy on the aioli/mayonnaise and any other add-ins, like chives, celery, small diced tomato, diced onion.
I have lots of strange stuff in my kitchen. The mini-whisk is the least of it. I have a bundt pan that I’m very fond of. But my favorite is (another story):
A few years ago a group of us had reservations at a hot restaurant my husband really wanted to go to. It sounded precious and twee. (It was. It lasted something like 4 months.) The day of, the dog must have eaten something off the sidewalk or something. The vet said she was fine but she should be observed. I said to my husband, “Do not change the reservation in any way because they won’t honor it. I’ll call X. He will be my replacement. Do me a favor, though. Bring everyone back to the apartment for dessert. I want to hear all about it.”
My husband had recently returned from continental Europe and, at my request, loaded up on real chocolate, which is cheaper than the Hershey’s crap we have to put up with. The gang came back and what awaited them was my fondue set ablaze with an array of fruits and cookies to dunk into like a gallon of chocolate-y goodness.
“You have a fucking fondue set?”
“Don’t you?”
My frenemy, X, somewhat drunkenly pulled me aside. “You fucking set me up didn’t you? That restaurant was horrific. I spent $200 and I’m starving.”
“Here, have a strawberry, I’ll dunk it for you. I thought you’d like the restaurant. You drag me around to all kinds of stupid things. Remember that gallery, air quotes, in the middle of–”
“Yes, that was a mistake.”
“Or how about the time we schlepped up to [Methville] on MetroNorth only to be confronted by a dystopian, failed Hudson River manufacturing town–”
“It was supposed to be a thriving underground arts colony. Fine, you win. I’m not feeling up to traveling back to my apartment. Can I crash here again?”
“Of course. You probably have early-onset diabetes. Or cirrhosis. Do you want another strawberry?”
I love that story.
I’m very picky and can’t eat the black bits, telling me they’re organ bits only makes it worse! 😬 But I’ll eat strawberries in chocolate.
…salad isn’t really found within my comfort zone but turning dressing into a glaze sounds tasty
…I’m all right dipping the bread in just oil & balsamic vinegar?
Carbs are our friends. If in bread. Or pasta. Or dessert. Ignore those Atkins zealots!
or beer*
This sounds delicious for a hot summer day when you’re too lazy / hot to turn on an oven.
Also, this reminds me of one of the best meals we ever had in Cinque Terra over looking the Med. There were 10 of us on vacation and the waiter brought out one of those platters with a sea bass on it surrounded by potatoes and what not. For the dipping of the bread they had this balsamic reduction that to this day I would probably knife someone for.